It's Sr Picture time!

And since most of my blog readers are family members, heeeere's Andrew! (my cousin)













You can see his whole gallery right here.

Consent

I signed a consent form the other day. It was a doozy.

-You may experience pain and bleeding and swelling.

cool.

-You may experience hives, with swelling and itching.

right.

-You may experience nerve damage causing the inability to taste/feel for a period of time up to and including indefinitely.

bring it on.

I had my wisdom teeth pulled. I finally got sick of the headaches and scheduled the appointment. Fortunately, they were fully grown in and all it took was a local anesthetic and he pulled them right out. No trouble at all. I felt fine by the next day and now I feel fantastic because the headaches are gone! YAY!

To top it off, I have the best dentist in the world and he offered to do the surgery for free since I don't have dental insurance. Free. True story. All I had to do was drive 5 hours, which was no problem at all. What does one do for a dentist who does something so nice? Any ideas?

Oh, and I kept my teeth to show them to Nathan. He thinks the tooth fairy should give me $200 for those. I'm still waiting.

Family reunion

A lot of my fondest memories come from family reunions for as long as I can remember. Not everybody goes every year, but Grandma always has one and we all do our best to be there.

I have some pictures to share for my family members that read my blog. You see, there's this funny little side effect of being a photographer. People close to me get so used to me being around with my camera, that they don't bring their own. I am the official picture taker. ;) Good thing I like doing it!

My kids and my cousins on the boat. It's my kids first time on a speed boat and, granted, we didn't go very fast, but they loved it!



The kids burying my cousins husband (and the newest member of our family) in the sand.


Nathan's turn.


Marshmallow time! My family had to leave the night before everyone else, so we started marshmallows a little early so my kids wouldn't miss out. These are my cousins.


And the pregnant girls. My sisters and 2 of my cousins are all having babies! (click the picture to see it bigger)

Poor Gabe, surrounded by girls.

My husband has a large family so my kids have a lot of cousins to play with. But poor Gabe is the loan boy in a sea of girls. Just older than him are 3 girls. 2 of Dave's sisters and 1 sister in law all had girls a few months apart from each other. Then Gabe came. Following Gabe, 2 more girls were born.

Now my sisters are pregnant and providing some cousins on my side of the family. Rachel is having a girl in October. That left April as Gabe's only chance for a boy cousin. Today was her ultra sound. It's a girl. Little Emma Jean will be coming in December.

Now it's down to his second cousins. I do have 1 cousin who has a boy close to Gabe's age. They got to know each other at the family reunion last weekend. I have 2 other cousins that are currently pregnant...I'm crossing my fingers for more boys!

Another milestone!

My sister assures me that this makes me a nerd, but I wanted to blog this before midnight so it would be the same day it happened.

Nathan lost his first tooth!

It's been loose a little over a week and tonight I put him to bed and he showed up a bit later to show me that it was way looser than it was earlier. He bounced around for a while and kept saying "I'm so excited!" After he pulled and twisted and wiggled it for about 45 minutes, I finally asked if I could help and popped it right out!





We put it in a little bag and discussed logistics. He wanted to know if he should put it right under the spot where he laid his head or over to the side because he didn't want to squish the tooth fairy when she came. He decided it was okay right under his head and that she'd survive.

Tell me, what would you have done?

Suppose your children wanted to make you a snack. They went into the kitchen for a while and then returned with a treat that they were very proud of. They stood next to you, grinning, while they explained what was in said treat then waited for you to eat and react.

I got two treats. The first one consisted of a a piece of chedder cheese, topped with strawberry syrup, garlic, orange juice and another piece of chedder cheese. The second treat was chunks of chedder cheese and garlic in a bowl topped with rice milk.

MMMMMMMMMMM!!!!!!

I took a bite of both, grinned, praised them both on how great it was and what a nice surprise it was. They seemed happy with watching me take only one bite and they left to play. I siezed the opportunity and put the rest in the garbage disposal.

Oregon - Awesome and Annoying

Awesome -


-Voodoo Doughnuts. They were weird but SO YUMMY!











My favorite was a donut with chocolate frosting, dipped in oreos and drizzled with Peanut Butter. YUM!

-Harry Potter 5 at the IMAX. Not exclusive to OR, but still very cool.

-Funky Birdhouses on the side of the road with a lockbox and a note saying to just leave money and take one.



-Bald Eagles (no pictures...I don't have a long enough zoom lens)

-My parents for inviting us to stay with them in their timeshare.

-The coast.





-Daisies on the ground.



-Tidepools



-Nathan trying to be like his Uncle Bud





Annoying -

-The fog



-It's against the law to pump your own gas. At one point I sat at a gas station for 5 minutes waiting for someone to come pump it. Nobody came so I went to another one down the street and sat there until my Mom went and got someone. HELLO! I could have filled it up myself twice by then!

But overall, I LOVED MY VACATION!

My birthday presents.

From Gabe. I love these, so he did good. (with Dave's help)



Nathan and Aria picked their presents for me out and Dave just went with it. He said he tried to talk them out of it but gave up.



And the BEST.PRESENT.EVER. From Dave who totally surprised me! It's a speedlight, the flash goes off as fast as I shoot. It's AMAZING. Totally synchs to my camera too.

Randomness...again

1. Dinosaur Chicken now contains Pterodactyls.

2. Jimmy Neutron is the most hilarious cartoon ever.

3. Caillou is the dumbest.

4. It's almost my birthday (6 more days) and Dave just took the kids out to find a present. Aria LIVES for birthdays and secrets. So Dave was reminding her that whatever she picks out is a secret and not to tell me because when something is a secret you don't tell anybody. Her response, "No, when you have a secret you just tell the people that want to know the secret, but not anybody else." Guess I better not ask her what the secret is.

5. Speaking of secrets. The other day Nathan asked Aria if she would do something and she said no. He said why and as she walked away she said "just cause!" Then she looked at me and said (very excitedly) "Mom, I finally get to know the secret of 'cause'!" It never occured to me before that if I say "just because" she was dying to know the real reason which is apparently called "the secret of cause".

6. Gabe is entering the funny word pronunciation stage of toddlerhood. Some of my favorites

stwawbeenana - strawberry
dum - tongue
ween - swing

and when he says no it's always "Nooooooo, no. Noooooooo no, no, no." Said to the rythm of KT Tunstall in black horse and the cherry tree.

7. At my neice's baptism, all the kids got up to sing "I belong to the church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints" from the primary song book. I started to play the piano and Aria hissed "what song are we singing?" I told her and she said "ok". The kids started to sing and I heard her say (loudly) "I don't know this song!" She stood there for the remainder and as we walked back to our seats she said (loudly again) "I didn't sing a single.word." The next day at the wedding she got up in front of everyone and sang every word to Regina Spektor's fidelity. Since then we've been listening to primary songs every night before bed. lol.

Happy Birthday, Nathan!

I can't believe I'm about to post this picture. It's not pretty. And as a preface, I had pre-eclampsia so I was literally swollen from head to toe. Anyway...this was me (on the right - Aria didn't recognize me just now. lol) a little over 6 years ago. My friend that's with me had her little boy exactly 1 week before I had mine.



I was induced with cervadil in the evening of June 21st due to the pre-eclampsia. At 11:30-ish PM the doctor came in and broke my water (I was dilated to a 3). Suddenly everything started happening much faster. The nurses were a pain in the butt and kept blowing off my insistance that I was progressing quickly. I kept asking one of them to check me and she would say not to worry, that I'd likely still be in labor 12 hours from then and did I want an epidural? Finally, shortly after 1 AM I convinced her to check me after swearing that I felt the urge to push. She kinda rolled her eyes and checked only to be shocked that I knew what I was talking about and went into high gear gathering the stuff and calling the Dr. Nathan was born after just a few pushes at 1:30 AM on June 22. He wasn't breathing at first, but he recovered quickly and I had my firstborn! Beyond a little jaundice, he was perfect!

Here he is at 2 weeks old.



And as he grew....







And today! He is now 6 years old! It's hard to believe it's been 6 years already.





He had a fun party. We went to a local indoor water park and the kids just played their little hearts out. It was perfect. I didn't have to do too terribly much in the planning/organizing department and the kids had a blast. He even got the cake he wanted. Sort-of. He wanted a Mario cake. We looked online for some ideas and he had his heart set on this one.



He said if I couldn't make that, then he supposed he could settle for this.



Right. This is what he got. (thanks to an online friend who had a hard-to-find Mario toy and my mad cake decorating skillz...or lack thereof)



Fortunately, he was pleased. lol.

Happy Birthday, Nathan!

Start 'em young

I don't care if my kids stay up late as long as they're in bed with a book. I even give Gabe a book to look at every time I lay him down. I went to check on him the other night and found this. Isn't it sweet?

My little ballerina

Since I was complaining about my 4 yr old last week, thought I'd post this. She's supposed to be doing a sit-up without using her hands to help, while keeping her legs straight.

She has a hard time with that, lol.



This is Miss Kate. The best dance teacher/babysitter ever.





Some things Aria has learned. (sorry if I butcher the spelling on these)

Plie


Saute


Arabesque


and Vogue.

Four. Yuck.

Have I mentioned that 4 years old is not my favorite age? Well...here it is again. 4 years old is not my favorite age.

Today Aria went to a neighbors house to invite them over to play. I watched from the front porch. When the little girl said that her mommy said she couldn't, Aria burst into full tilt sobbing at the top of her lungs, then proceeded to run as fast as her little bare feet could carry her (which was surprisingly fast) back to me on the porch and throw herself into my arms for a tantrum. It was just the most recent of many of them. Entirely too many. December can't come soon enough. (she'll be 5, I swear it's a magic number)

She's still capable of sometimes being cute. It's a good thing too. I practiced panning on her while she rode on the merry-go-round at the park. Which, by the way, I thought those were removed from all parks, but there it was, in a brand new park, no less. It made me sick to look at, but the kids liked it.